On a writing retreat, I read through a manuscripts-wanted listing in an arts commission newsletter and noticed a magazine asking for short essays by women on work. I thought about my work roles and how I felt about them–mother, teacher, co-owner of my husband’s computer networking business, poet. How I wished that my “job” as poet were my day job with pay. Since I had been teaching the definition essay, I decided to write an essay to define this dream job using the various rhetorical styles an extended definition relies upon. I started with a simile and included a short narration to describe the role of poet. I delineated the characteristics of that role and included the how-to style when I wrote about performing this role. I employed cause-and-effect in describing what effect my job had on others and on me.

Dream Job: A Day in the Life of a Resident Poet

I administered a poem to my husband this week, much as an herbalist administers tinctures. He was out of town for two and a half weeks, working hard and missing being home. When he is on the road teaching all-day seminars, he fills some of his nights going to places listed in his guide to the best billiard halls in the country. He says the nonverbal activity focuses his mind. When he gets back to his hotel, though, he is lonely. The poem I emailed him, “The Poet at Seventeen,” by Larry Levis, is about playing pool.

It begins:

My youth? I hear it mostly in the long, volleying
Echoes of billiards in the pool halls where
I spent it all, extravagantly, believing
My delicate touch on a cue would last for years.

After meandering through tilled fields, teen boy fantasies about girls, reading poems in school, driving a tractor and autumn nights, the poet ends:

And then the first dark entering the trees —
And inside, the adults with their cocktails before dinner,
The way they always seemed afraid of something,
And sat so rigidly, although the land was theirs.

How hard it is sometimes  for my husband  to be the teacher, the expert in the subject, the one who “owns” the day, when inside he remembers a way without words, a stick to touch, the bond of those who play. My husband was happier for having read the poem, he told me, and he sounded more connected to his experience. He thanked me, and I was reminded of a dream I had had years before. In it, I’d hung a shingle outside my house. Sheila Bender, R.P., it said, in black calligraphic letters on a white board. R.P. meant Resident Poet. On the second story of my house, at my desk under the eaves, I worked on my poetry. The many books of poems I knew and loved surrounded me on floor to ceiling shelves. From time to time, I’d hear my doorbell ring.

Then, I’d descend the stairs and let the caller in. We would enter my writing room and sit at a small round table having tea. The caller would describe why he or she had come to see me. It might be the grief of losing someone dear, the uncertainty of parenting, the concentration-breaking joy of newfound love, the awkwardness of wanting to talk to an old lover, the loneliness of perceiving differently than one’s family. I would go to my bookshelves, my pharmacy of poems, and I would pull a book down, open it to where I knew the right poem lay. I’d watch my caller read the poem and, watching the muscles of his or her face, I would know the poem was right. I would hand my client a pen and sheets of paper with instructions to copy the poem and the author’s name from the book, word for word. After that, we’d read the work together once and sit a mo­ment more.

My caller would take the poem home to memorize. To whisper at night, to belt out under the sun, to recite while driving. Poems require looking past anger and hate and irritation, loneliness and grief. Though many a poem is planted in the soil of such emotions, a poem bursts through that soil and flowers. It is, to paraphrase William Wordsworth, one person’s insides speaking to another’s, and so it provides the intimate contact we need for healing and for growth, for knowing what is human in our lives.

There are feelings and longings we understand and accept in ourselves only when we recognize them in someone else’s words, words that would never have been ours to speak until we saw them written out of someone else’s life. Words come from another’s experience in a place and in a time that miraculously match our experience in our own place and time.

As my callers left, they would place payment in a white porcelain bowl on the post at the bottom of my staircase. With the money, I’d buy more poetry books and the time to read them.

****

I enjoyed comparing myself to an herbalist administering just the right remedy for a patient’s relief, something that needed no preparation to be useful. And I was entertained by the way that action fit with an old dream I had had of actually doing this sort of work as an occupation. There are steps in performing work, and I enjoyed visualizing those steps and the function of this kind of work: “There are feelings and longings we understand and accept in ourselves only when we recognize them in someone else’s words.”

Having made my most important point, the discovered articulation of why I love poetry, I was ready to finish up my definition of Resident Poet: the client is helped, pays and the result for me is more of what I love, poetry books and time to read them.

I reread the submission request in the arts commission newsletter and realized I’d missed the deadline. Then I remembered another publication that was interested in essays about work, so I sent my essay to that publication. I was pleased when it was accepted for publication, but most of all, I enjoyed using the definition style to write a personal essay about a favorite role, one I wish I could have on a more consistent basis.

Your Turn

If writing were to figure heavily in your perfect job, what would your daily work look like? Think about the job description, the functions you’d perform and the skills required. Think about what a day in your life would look like in this job, the responsibilities that would come with the role and the rewards. What skills would you employ and how? How would doing your job well help others? What would result if you were too tired to do your job well or you felt inept? What would the risks be? What promotions would be available? What would be required to earn them?

In addition to offering you the opportunity to write an interesting essay, defining your dream writing job will help you keep your sights on the importance to you of your writing.